The American Camp Association (ACA) welcomes Marna Redding as the new chief development officer.

In this interview, Marna sits down with us to discuss her new role, her career, what she’s looking forward to accomplishing with ACA, and more.

Learn more about Marna on TikTok in her #RapidCampfireQuestions.
 

Marna, we are so excited to have you join our team. What drew you to American Camp Association?

Thanks so much. When I saw the job posting for the Chief Development Officer at ACA, I just knew it was the job for me. The job description matched my skill set, my experiences set me up for a role like this, and then to top it off, I have seen firsthand the benefits my children have received from their camp experience. The opportunity to join the association for camp professionals, the very people who are making a lasting impact on my children and kiddos around the country, was an opportunity that matched my career priorities.

Tell us a bit about your professional experiences. How did you get from that first job to ACA?

Happy to! Much of my career has been in the higher education space, raising money and recruiting volunteers to help fulfill our mission. My job in grad school at Miami University [Ohio] was running their phonathon program, teaching students to cold call parents and alumni and ask for gifts. That was a great place for a lot of my fundraising training!

From there I worked on the student side of higher ed, which very much informed my style of working with volunteers throughout organizations, and back to development where I was able to hone my skills of fundraising, friend raising, and working with foundations and corporations to find support. I had the opportunity to work at our local chamber of commerce, Capital Region Chamber here in Albany, New York, and this proved invaluable in my career working with community members to support business locally, helping to create a stronger economy. This experience has very much informed my role at ACA. Understanding what it means to work for a membership-based organization, has made my intro to ACA great.

For those members who may not know what a chief development officer is, how would you define your role?

I am responsible for all our fundraising efforts as it relates to finding support for our Annual Giving Campaign, which means unrestricted dollars, our endowment, and our initiatives that may need some extra dollars behind them, like research, advocacy, and program development. But perhaps bigger than this is to create a culture of philanthropy at ACA. By building relationships, securing gifts, and overseeing a strategy to ensure that we have resources we need to meet our mission. In our case, it is about educating camp professionals, camp families, and the wider global community about the impact they can make by investing in ACA — by supporting our mission to enrich the lives of children, youth, and adults through the camp experience!

OK, so fundraising. What excites you about this type of work?

There is a common misconception that fundraisers spend their days trying to convince people to give them money. That is not the reality. Fundraising is about finding the people who care about what your organization is doing — its needs and its impact — and connecting them to that mission. There is a lot of joy in this work as you build relationships with people and funders!

My favorite part of the job is the relational piece. If you look me up on LinkedIn — please do, I love connecting — you’ll see that I list my superpower as building lasting relationships and that is so true! I want to meet as many people as possible, listen to what their passions and interests are, and find ways to help them realize their vision for a better future. People give for so many different reasons: because they had a wonderful experience, because they feel grateful and want to pay it forward, because they want to make something better, or because they want to leave a lasting legacy. It is exciting to work with donors and funders to find the best philanthropic tools to accomplish their goals.

What is one thing about you that people wouldn’t readily be able to Google?

During college, I studied abroad on a program called Semester at Sea. When I enrolled it was through the University of Pittsburgh. We sailed around the world leaving from Vancouver and I traveled to Japan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Israel, Turkey, Italy, Morocco, and then back to Florida. It was an amazing experience for me and really opened my eyes to the world of development, fundraising for a cause, to make the world a better place.

Marna S. Redding graduated from Gettysburg College where she majored in psychology and graduated with her Master of Science from Miami University (OH) in Higher Education Administration. Immediately prior to ACA, Marna served as the director of foundation relations at Albany Law School, and before that as vice president member services for the Capital Region Chamber. She lives in Niskayuna, NY, with her family and her children attend Camp O-AT-KA and Wyongeonic Camp, both in Maine.